Integrated education

[Henry Joy]

When is Ireland going to wake up and realise that integrated, secular education is the way forward?

[PaintingMedium]

When is Ireland going to wake up and realise that integrated, secular education is the way forward?

well, tomorrow maybe

[Eddiepops]

Moved to health and social affairs.

[Pericles]

What distinctions between your "integrated, secular" model and the current system would you make?

[scotusone]

oh ya . and big comprehensives too .

[Seos]

When is Ireland going to wake up and realise that integrated, secular education is the way forward?

well, tomorrow maybe

I'm busy tomorrow, what about next week?

[FutureTaoiseach]

Soon hopefully.

[patslatt]

When is Ireland going to wake up and realise that integrated, secular education is the way forward?

The major advantage of religious education in Irish secondary schools is that it effectively combines private sector efficiencies with public sector subsidies. The Junior Cert and the Leaving Cert,whatever their deficiencies, provide yardsticks for schools to aim at. This is a better model than the American system of elected state run school boards and lack of standardised exams.

Irish private schools are autonomous,with managers free to manage their schools as they see fit,though they can't dismiss incompetent teachers, thanks to excessive trade union powers. Competition among schools helps to maintain standards and they offer considerable choice to the Irish Catholic public. A similar system which operates in Holland,though nominally Catholic, is rated one of Europe's best.

In American schools, school principals' power to manage are typically hobbled by excessive school board bureaucracy and excessive trade union powers, which as in Ireland prevent the dismissal of incompetent teachers.
The very large size of schools limits the choice of schools available in a given area.

[johnfás]

Are the terms integrated and secular in regard to education and religion not slightly contradictory. In order to be integrated the schools should surely take into account all people's background and traditions, these would each be respected and an inclusive means of education established. Secular is surely the converse and the differences would be ignored and a model of education for the whole of society is established. In short, an integrated model of education could depend on the location within the state, a secular one would not.

[St Disibod]

There’s so many issues thrown up thus far, I don’t really know where to start. I suppose I may as well just work through posts in the order they appear:

When is Ireland going to wake up and realise that integrated, secular education is the way forward?

This really is a shoddy way to start a thread. What exactly do you mean by “integrated, secular education”? Do you mean non-denominational (either through the teaching of religion on a neutral basis or by the complete exclusion of religion from the classroom), are you factoring in mixed sexes, are you taking into consideration class (i.e. should private and public education be integrated also, which amounts to abolishing private education), etc, etc. What do you mean?

Only once we pin such issues down can we debate the merits of a proposal. Not only are you asking when Ireland is going to take a certain action (leapfrogging the necessary debate on the merits of that action) but you are not even telling us what that action is going to be.

oh ya . and big comprehensives too .

Is this something you are advocating, or is that sarcasm?

For what it’s worth, I attended a large comprehensive school in Dublin. I have nothing but the highest praise for the school, and I think Ireland would be improved immensely if other schools adopted the model that was employed in my school. It was by no means a perfect school, but the vast bulk of the flaws stemmed from a lack of resources (which many other schools need not worry about because they are private and enjoy public funding- a bugbear of mine) and then problems that are ubiquitous across the education system regardless of the type of school (rigid employment structures and a creaking, uncompassionate Department of Education). And then the school suffered severely due to its location combined with its status as a public school- as an island of public education in a sea of private schools it received the lion’s share of the areas greater challenges in education- children booted out from other schools, special needs students fobbed off by other schools, young asylum seekers, and the list goes on. Yet despite these weights, I was provided with an excellent education and I would not swap it for any other on offer in Ireland (I do not doubt that the school I attended had weaknesses where others are strong, but overall I do not believe I could have got more out of any other school).

The major advantage of religious education in Irish secondary schools is that it effectively combines private sector efficiencies with public sector subsidies.

[...]

Competition among schools helps to maintain standards and they offer considerable choice to the Irish Catholic public.

Firstly you seem to be confusing religious (or denominational) education with private education. The two are not synonymous. I am not at all sure that one could possibly justify private education in Ireland as it is currently structured from a Rawlsian ‘veil of ignorance’ position given the dumping of problems on public schools as I outlined above. That we are now mimicking this system for our healthcare model I find quite frightful. But the private-public debate brings us off on a very separate tangent that certainly requires its own thread- or the reinvigoration of one of the many threads concerning that debate that are gathering dust in the archives.

Secondly, on your point of competition, that is all a matter of what we are competing for. If by going to a certain school one is given a leg up in life, say through the ‘old boys network’ that enrolment-to-graduation allows you to utilise, and that that advantage can only be bought at a price that puts it out of the range of the majority of the population that is hardly a good model is it? It simply engrains social castes so that the children of the rich can stay rich and the children of the poor stay poor regardless of ability- or at least it greatly dampens the importance of ability in determining one’s life chances and earning power.

If we are talking about CAO points, well then you are assuming that they are a good thing and the CAO model produces good students. I have grave doubts about that. The skills measured by the current model are very limited, and taken too far they can prove limiting for some as they become addicted to spoon-fed answers and binary codes of right answer and wrong answer (this is of course not that case for everyone, many very intelligent people with supple minds get very high points without it doing a bit of damage). And then there is a whole model based on competition which I question the lessons of: if other people do good you do worse because the points for the course you want to do might go up. To an extent that is unavoidable, and indeed it might be a valuable lesson on life and the rules of the market, but I still have my doubts.

Competition makes sense in a market economy (with the regulation that most people will accept is necessary). But we know how damaging quotas can be under an administered economy. In the Soviet Union when factories were told to produce more nails, they made them so thin they were worthless- but they fulfilled their instructions and met their quotas. When the emphasis was changed to weight nails were made too heavy, each one having a wasteful amount of metal in it. I fear competition for CAO points might be having a similar effect upon education as Soviet economic management had on the nail industry.

Education should be an end in itself- like health or security. It is not just a means for something: we should not educate people because it is good for the economy any more than we heal them because it is good for the economy or provide them with police protection and access to courts because it is good for the economy. Good health and security structures are necessary for a good economy, but that is not why we put them in place. Education needs to exist on a plain to itself- education for education’s sake. The economic dividends are bonuses of a good education system, not the raison d'être for it. I fear the CAO points structure is one of the greatest shadows over that critically important philosophy or sense of education. Learning becomes the reward of the examiner's pen rather than the development of the individual, so people don't develop their own ideas and just learn what the examiner wants to see. The long-term implications of that on our social and political structures is terrifying.